For people who already know what they want, they would be using keyboard shortcuts anyways which beats the mouse every time.

Thank GOD for that. That's been the only saving grace for '07 for me: the keyboard shortcuts for the tools I use most don't seem to have changed much, which is good because that's often the ONLY way I've been able to find commonly-used commands. I just don't have the time to play the usual hide 'n' seek game that Microsoft seems to think makes using Office '07 "fun".

It's dynamic, but only in relation to the menu which is maximised. All of the other options are there, you just need to click on them.
Compared to 'dynamic' menus in the old version (i.e. everything greyed out), it's much better. Plus it's right 80% of the time, which means greater productivity 80% of the time at the cost of an extra click 20% of the time.

First of all, I'll concede that 80% figure. If it were any lower no one would ever use the damn thing.

But, it's not "an extra click" the other 20% of the time. In my experience, and that of my cow-orkers, it's more like "roll the cursor over every icon in the current ribbon thet you don't immediately recognize and read the Tool Tip, in case the command you want is cleverly hidden in plain sight, and if you don't find it there, click through ALL the tabs at random and repeat the Tool Tip thing until you stumble upon the command wherever Microsoft decided to hide it, and when that doesn't provide joy, open Help and click on a half dozen different topics until you find the treasure." That's the part that gets really, really old, really, really fast.

Listen, on a certain level, I give Microsoft a lot of credit for trying to simplify their UI, and take it to another level. But as it always is with MS products, the problem is in the implementation. It is NO exageration to say that 90%+ of the people I now and work with who've had the misfortune to be forced to use Office 2007, hate it with a white-hot passion generally reserved for child molesters or GWB. If it works for you, then vaya con dios, muchacho. You're one of the blessed.

Microsoft sees that as a plus: customize the UI based on what Office thinks the user is trying to do. Nice, in theory. But it depends on a level of application telepathy that doens't exist. (Yet?)

Users see it as a minus: the commands they want aren't always where they expect to find them, so they end up wasting productive time trying to find them. More than a little frustrating when you have a deadline bearing down on you.

If Office did a better job of reading the user's mind, the Ribbon would rock. But since that's not likely to happen, Microsoft should go back to UI Design 101: a good UI is a consistent UI.

Don't suprise users by capriciously moving tools, or they'll hate you forever. Which is pretty much where 90% of Office '07 are right now.

I have been thinking very seriously to introduce a recorder in my life to settle arguments with my girlfriend (yes yes, here's my geek card). Arguments often boil down to who said what. On rare occasions, there is a record of that, email for example, and I can show exhibits and win.

Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday January 02, 2007 @07:43PM
from the green-and-the-gray dept.

Several readers have let us know about a report on MSNBC that France's space agency has announced plans to publish its archive of UFO sightings in a month or so. The archive includes some 6,000 reports relating to around 1,600 incidents over 30 years. In a separate development, many readers have sent in word of the reported UFO that at least six United Airlines workers saw over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last November. National Public Radio picked up the story with an interview with the Chicago Trib reporter who wrote about it yesterday. United is, strangely, denying that any such incident was ever brought up. The FAA admits there was an incident but is not investigating it.

Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday November 17, 2006 @08:38AM
from the oh-it-is-so-on-now dept.

Stony Stevenson writes "In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property." From the ComputerWorld article: "In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell earlier this month because Linux 'uses our intellectual property' and Microsoft wanted to 'get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.'"His exact wording is available at the Seattle Intelligencer, which has a transcript of the interview. Groklaw had an article up Wednesday giving some perspective on the Novell/Microsoft deal. Guess we'll have something to talk about in 2007, huh?